


Anywhere I would've followed you

by sadisticskittels



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-21
Updated: 2017-11-21
Packaged: 2019-02-05 05:40:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12788217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadisticskittels/pseuds/sadisticskittels
Summary: Chuck only calls Herc 'Dad' when he wants to hurt him.





	Anywhere I would've followed you

Chuck steps into a Jaeger for the first time and knows in a bone deep way that this is where he is going to die. Striker Eureka is where he feels like he was truly born, and he is certain that she is where he is going to die. He’s not sure how he feels about it but he doesn’t have to understand it to accept it.  


He’s made his choice, he makes it at the age of ten when his father makes his own vital choice. A Ranger is all that Chuck has ever wanted to be. To be like his father, to be enough for his father to look at and say, ‘Yes, I made the right choice.’ He’s killed ten Kaiju and it feels like it’s not enough. It’s never going to be enough.  


Becket. Becket boys, the wonders of the Kaiju War. The tide turns when Yancy dies and Raleigh runs. Fury, borne of a child’s heartbreak and hero worship boils over when Becket comes back with his blue eyes and the ghosts in them. The supposed Saviour. Like Chuck hasn’t been working his arse off, killing Kaiju, being better that the Becket brothers. Like what he’s done isn’t enough. It grates on him. The Shatterdome loves him. He gives them hope and Chuck hates him for it. Becket is an infested wound and Chuck has tried to lance him since the man fled. He’s yet to succeed.  


Drifting with Herc is difficult. The word father bounces around in his head and Chuck can’t say it without derision, so he calls Herc ‘Old Man’ and it comes out bitter but less bitter than ‘Dad’ would. The hurt frustration in Herc’s eyes makes his chest pain but it sets off a little spark of vindication too. Chuck knows Herc finds it difficult to like him. He loves him in the way fathers are meant to love their children because they are meant to love their children. Chuck thinks that if they weren’t blood (and blood might not be enough to save them, look at Uncle Scott), Herc wouldn’t go near him. If not for the Drift, they wouldn’t have a relationship at all and although he’s the one to throw that in Herc’s face, Chuck wonders if he doesn’t wound himself more than he does his co-pilot.  


Becket. It all comes back to Becket and Gypsy Danger and The Breach. But mostly it’s Becket because Pentecost hasn’t scratched his Becket itch and killing one brother wasn’t enough. Or maybe that’s why the wash-out is back. Pentecost’s guilt. Chuck would have let him die on that fucking wall. It’s hard though to maintain the levels of anger (and Chuck is angry at everything and he can’t help it) and he’s tired. The awareness of The End coming prickles along his spine and sometimes he lies in his bunk and feels the ghost drift passing between him and Herc. Herc is a beacon of calmness for all the man is explosive energy when he's mad. At night, Chuck lets himself drift like that and they both refuse to acknowledge it in the morning because words clog their throats and all that comes out is acid like sputters and insults. Chuck feels Herc’s helplessness, feels his own and then throws it all back in the man’s face because what else can he do?  


But Chuck is tired. All he has known is a Shatterdome and the smell of Kaiju blue and oil. All he’s truly known are Jaegers. He does not know what he will do if the Breach is closed and he lives. He does not think there will be a place for him. He wonders what Becket and Mori will do. He looks at them, their fluidity with each other and though he’s sure they aren’t fucking, there is something enviable about their intimacy. Chuck’s attempts at intimacy are fumblings in the dark with people he doesn’t know and never sees again. They are sparse and Chuck can’t remember if he’s ever been kissed sweetly.  


But kisses don’t matter when there are Kaiju to fight and Raleigh Beckets to piss off. The fight they have is good because at least Chuck understands it. Punch, get punched, punch again and keep punching until you’re face down in the ground with a knee digging into your spine. He wants to keep fighting because it’s a release of everything that is pent up and lodged in his heart but Herc cuts it short and Chuck hates him a little bit more for it.  


His shoulder aches when he climbs in Striker and he wonders if this is when he dies. He wonders it each time he gets into Eureka but he knows now that this is not the time. This is not the time, this is not Operation Pitfall. But he does almost die and it is surprising, the little brush of mortality that comes with a dead Jaeger and a Kaiju looming and having nothing but a flare gun in hand and your father beside you. For a moment, Herc is father, dad, loved, because they are on top of Eureka like mad men and Herc is still standing even though his shoulder’s dislocated and his arm’s broken. He still stands and yells with thunder in his voice. Chuck can cheer for Gypsy because he’s cheering for her, not her pilots and it is always beautiful to watch a Kaiju die. But his father’s arm is fucked and as Eureka is lifted up out of the sea by chopper and the Kaiju are dead, Chuck realises he will never drift with his father again. He will never talk with his father again. It closes his throat the whole way home.  


Operation Pitfall is the marker. The thing that will stop Chuck’s twenty one years of life. He still hasn’t decided if he is mad about dying or mad that he won’t get to keep fighting Kaiju for as long as he lives. Kaiju are bad, he knows this but he also knows what he is and what's he's not and that’s a Ranger and not a civilian and in a world without Kaiju what use is there for a Ranger. His father at least, is a military man through to his bones and has options but Chuck’s the presumptuous, rebellious brat he’s so often been told he is. He’d be paraded as a war hero if they won, parcelled out to interviews and politicians and Chuck is not made for that. He fights because he is good at it, he fights so his father makes the right choice when Chuck is ten. He fights because he has to. There has never been an end to the fight for him. He's never imagined it because it seems so impossible.  


He sees Becket before it begins. Lanky, haunted Becket who still manages to be a good man even though Chuck is sure parts of his brain are irreparably scarred. A man who continues to function despite all, is a good man. So Chuck nods to him because Raleigh (and he can be Raleigh now) is a good man, a good fighter and a good pilot. The heartbreak of boy Chuck is still there but it is tempered by the knowledge of a man called Raleigh Becket. Not the pilot wonder, but the man. A man broken and half healed who comes back to do what breaks him.  


Chuck learns somethings and knows that he can’t unlearn other things so he doesn’t hug his father but he does call him ‘Dad’ and it hurts to see Herc stony faced because Herc will cry if he does anything else. Chuck’s nose gets blocked and his eyes are wet and he wants to hug his father but he cradles Max’s face instead and presses a kiss to his forehead like Herc does when Chuck is nine and still has a mother. Chuck hopes Herc knows he doesn’t blame him for her. Not really. If they could drift one more time, Chuck would tell him. But he won’t.  


And so Chuck steps into Striker Eureka with a dead man and thinks that Drifting isn’t the same as talking. He reaches for his father’s mind on instinct and finds the smooth glass of Stacker Pentecost and Chuck wants to push away from the harnesses and go back to his father. But he doesn’t because Chuck is a good pilot even if he isn’t a good son. He reckons that saving the world is enough to make his father’s choice the right one.  


It is a pleasure to drift with Pentecost. The man is smooth glass, cool and hard. It is different from the heat, love and exasperation that pours off of his father’s mind when they drift. They hold off Slattern, wound it enough for it to call to help and Chuck feels proud in that moment. He thinks that his father should be in here with him, that he should have felt the exhilaration and terror of fighting a Cat 5.  


But his father is not here. His father is on the comms and Chuck feels like his own insides are breaking apart because he wants his father in his head. He wants to die in the Drift with his father like pilots are meant to do. But he’s with Stacker (and he can call him Stacker now) and that will have to be okay. There is a decision to make. Chuck does not think that this decision is as difficult as the one his father makes when Chuck is nine, or maybe it is as easy as the one his father makes when Chuck is nine. His whole world or one part of it. He doesn’t say good bye to his father because they don’t speak but Chuck hopes his Dad knows what Chuck wants to say. He thinks he does. Stacker gives the order and they flick the switch. Striker Eureka shudders, wonders why her pilots are destroying her but ultimately obeys because she is a good soldier. The order goes through, the bomb begins to engage, and Chuck closes his eyes. There is a white hot flash and


End file.
